In elementary school, I always knew I was the next on the classroom roster when the teacher paused, chuckled, and said, “I’m not even going to try to pronounce this name.” I would raise my hand and say, “that’s me,” as if I were claiming to be the silence itself. I had a typical South Indian name—lots of letters, easy to mispronounce. But when it wasn’t pronounced at all, that’s when I was rendered invisible.

In the past nine months, I have worked with a team of Texas Asian American leaders on the Austin Asian Civic Coalitions Committee—representing diverse generations, immigration stories, and countries of descent—to ensure that all Asian American Pacific Islanders were counted in Central Texas. We sought to meet a challenge cited in a 2019 Census report: Asian Americans are the least likely racial group to respond to the Census—or even express familiarity with it. By not responding, AAPIs wouldn’t just lose out on critical resources but also on an incredible opportunity to dispel the stereotypes that keep us civically invisible. We were told by the United Way for Greater Austin that a 1% undercount could result in a $25 million loss in federal funding.

Therefore, when COVID forced us to take our boots off the ground, we found translators, worked with digital marketing experts, and partnered with community leaders and organizations to contact to hard-to-reach communities in every way we could. In the end, our efforts contributed to aggregate Census response rates of 67% and 72%, respectively, in Travis and Williamson Counties. Our success provided assurance that communities with AAPIs will receive federal funding for education and health care, and, importantly, political representation.

We would be politically visible.

Read the full article about encouraging Asian American civic participation by Suchitra V. Gururaj at Yes! Magazine.